The Internet is a global network of connected computer networks. Over the last several years, the Internet has grown significantly. A large number of computers on the Internet provide information in various forms. Anyone with a computer connected to the Internet can potentially tap into this vast pool of information. A typical user uses a browsing application (e.g., a browser) to access one or more Web pages provided by a Web server. A typical browser may be a version of Internet Explorer from Microsoft Corporation, or Netscape Communicator from Netscape Communications Corporation.
However, in a conventional user interface of a web browsing application such as Internet Explorer, in order to go back to a previous page, a user has to use a backward button to step through each of the pages between the current page and the desired previous page. Alternatively, a user may select an item from a menu corresponding to a previous page which he/she intends to retrieve. In which case, the user has to remember the title of the particular page in order to select from the menu.
For example, if a user is searching the Internet using a search engine, such as “Google” from Google Technology, Inc. (www.google.com), and the user has obtained a first search result page (listing the first, most relevant group of “hits” or matched documents) and the user has clicked on one of the hits to bring up a first page (“first hit”) and then clicked on a link on the first page to obtain a second page (e.g., a further page originated from the first page), then the user would have to select (e.g. click on) the back button twice to go back to the first search result page (in order to see what other hits should be explored). Alternatively, the user would have to select the first search result page from a menu (e.g. the “Go” menu on Internet Explorer for Macintosh or the history menu on Internet Explorer for windows) assuming the user can recognize the proper page from the list of pages in the menu. These operations would also have to be performed to go back to a page which is not a search result page. While a user could make a “bookmark” or “favorite” for a page or a search result page which is obtained, the user would still have to select the proper “bookmark” or “favorite” from a menu, and repeated use of making a bookmark/favorite out of a page or search result page would clutter up a user's collection of bookmarks/favorites. The user could alternatively make a particular page or a search page the “Home” page (effectively a default initial document) but this would require the user to reset the “Home” page after each temporary use of the Home page feature, which makes this option very awkward.